Reservation EP

The 20-year-old Detroit native's first full-length to feature all original beats showcases her as the rare rapper who's copped a great deal of contemporary popular hip-hop and R&B and come out the other side as purely herself. Angel Haze may be the perfect avatar for hip-hop in 2012.

Featured Tracks:

"New York" — Angel HazeVia Pitchfork

"Werkin' Girls" — Angel HazeVia Pitchfork

The 20-year-old Angel Haze is just beginning to burrow her way up from the underground, yet she may be the perfect avatar for hip-hop in 2012. For one, it's hard to even call her a rapper; on Reservation, her first full-length to feature all original beats, she is as comfortable emulating Aaliyah as she is Foxy Brown. Like so many of rap's buzzing young internet stars of the moment, her background flies in the face of hip-hop's cultural bedrock: She grew up in the orbit of a Detroit-area church she has likened to a cult, and until her family fled when she was 16, Haze had little exposure to pop culture. Like Nicki Minaj, Azealia Banks, and Frank Ocean, her sexuality is vague (in her words: "I'm free spirited & I embrace gender-fluidity"), but it doesn't define her. Her music is deeply open, befitting someone just out of her teens who tweets and vlogs with no filter. The title Reservation-- and the small image of a tipi on its cover-- are a nod to her Native American heritage. But Haze is not just one of hip-hop's preeminent young faces; as Reservation readily displays, she's also one of its preeminent young voices.

Haze's ascension alongside (or in the shadow of) Banks will undoubtedly tie them together in a lot of minds, so it should be noted that they are very different artists. There are no theatrics with Haze, and her music and image (at least at the moment) have no intersection with the worlds of dance or high fashion. The cover of Reservation is telling-- just Haze, minimally dressed, in the midst of recording. The subtext is clear: What you see is what you get. While Banks is trying her hand at smoothing over the forced marriage of rap and dance music by introducing producers like Hudson Mohawke and Machinedrum, Haze is determinately whacking through the weeds of Young Money's rap kingdom. The ease with which she empties her brain while floating from rapping to singing recalls no one less than Lauryn Hill, but the mood and much of the sonics (as well her remixing a handful of his songs on previous mixtapes) suggest that Drake looms large. Her punchline- and simile-heavy rapping are purely latter-day Lil Wayne, except unlike this current incarnation of Weezy, Haze bites as hard as she barks. Even songs like "CHI (Need to Know)" and "Drop It" bring to mind Minaj's rap ballads if they were stripped of their focus grouped cynicism.

Haze isn't necessarily forging new territory by herself, but she's a standout figure merely by existing within the framework of her generation's popular rap music. Reservation is something that could appeal to a vast number of hip-hop and R&B fans, but-- similar to young rappers Chief Keef and Lil Reese-- Haze has a unique ability to interact with her influences as well as the pop-rap world writ large while still remaining distinctly individual. That's not an accident, either. Like plenty of rappers, she expresses pride in being herself, but not in the boilerplate manner you get from a lot of artists that are in actuality just thinly veiled facsimiles of established stars. Instead, you get the sense that Haze has spent a lot of time thinking about and working through who she is as an artist and a person. On "Supreme", she bares her fangs and viciously addresses her competition ("I'ma keep on running with all of you bitches after me") but she gamely undercuts her own swagger by singing an innocent chorus where she admits that she was at one point "trying to be like everyone else." The admission is brave and vulnerable, and her willingness to put herself on blast only adds power to her shit-talking. On "This Is Me", a song where she addresses both her family and a younger version of herself, she softly sings a chorus about finding her identity that seems wise beyond her years: "Don't let me go/ Set my soul free, let me grow." Songs like these on Reservation are both the result and the extension of rap's slow yet indefinite move away from Teflon masculinity.

Haze is the latest in line of artists redefining the image of rap, but that's not to say that she's abandoned (or is above) rapping for rapping's sake. Two of the most choice cuts on Reservation are "New York" and "Werkin' Girls", where Haze proves that she can go toe-to-toe with any young rapper when it comes to flow and punchlines. Like Minaj, Banks, and even Drake, one of the most fascinating aspects of Haze's career moving forward will be how she further approaches the merging of hyper-lyrical rap and pop or R&B, as there are some clear demarcations in style across the EP. That said, she has plenty of time to continue to grow as an artist, and one of the main takeaways from Reservation is that it should be a blast watching Haze do so.

Hip-hop is often suffocated by conversation amongst its fans and personalities that focuses on what popular rap music means for the genre, its culture and its future. Arguably no other genre is as beset by rampant copycatting, trend-hopping, and incestuous collaborations that seem to treat the idea of artistic vision as a luxury instead of a right. On Reservation, Angel Haze shows herself to be the rare rapper who has copped a great deal of contemporary popular hip-hop and R&B and come out the other side as purely herself. The rap world is constantly in a state of flux and worry, but more artists like Angel Haze, and things should turn out alright.